National Lampoons Beach Vacation

9/27/17: I wrote this a few years ago before our last trip to the beach with dad. It ended up being a fairly rough week for dad. He had just finished 10 days of whole brain radiation, leaving him burned from the neck up, bald and fairly miserable. His mouth, eyes and scalp really hurt. Mom had a hard time keeping him comfortable. He was really dizzy, loosing a lot of fluid by way of urine. It was hard to keep his fluids up and pain managed. We all fretted over him all week. But there were some good moments too. I'll talk about those another time. So here's this pre-vacation, optimistic post about my favorite vacation spot. Its weird for me to read it as I was a very different person.
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6/30/15:  After a particularly rough water week at Nags Head, NC, my parents decided not to return. I got stuck in a rip tide and dad had to come and help me to safety. When you get caught in a rip tide you have to swim with the direction of the water until you make it back to shore.  It took a while. Luckily, dad was young and healthy and a damn good swimmer. But we both got beat up pretty good. That was the turning point for my parents. Vacation shouldn't be deadly. The following fall of 1988, Dad was mentioning the dilemma of where to go to the beach to a friend and they mentioned Sunset Beach, NC.

Over the years, we’ve collectively tried various locations and situations for our beach vacation. We’ve been to Pawley’s Island, Edisto Beach, Holden Beach, Duck, Carolina Beach and Rodanthe. We have had cousins, aunts, uncles and grand parents join us. In the end, there is only one place we want to plant our asses for a week: Sunset Beach, NC. Sunset is our home away from home. Its kicked back and anything you can't get on the island, you can get on a short car ride inland.

There are some specific things I'd like to describe for you in list form, in no particular order.

1. The Island Market: There's something about the smell of this place. It smells like salt, AC, and sunscreen. Always moderately friendly folks behind the counter. Always an ample supply of junk food, cheer wine/sundrop and t-shirts. 

2. The Sunset Beach Pier: Its old, ya'll. Its probably been rebuilt many times and it ain't fancy. Plenty of room for all the fisher-folk and their gear at any time of the day. And don't tell my mom, but you can buy beer by the can and junk food. 

3. The worlds last swing bridge: They built a new fancy bridge and retired the swing bridge back in 2010. They were smart, though and made it into a museum just off the island.  But if you never had a chance drive over it when it was in service, you missed out on lines of well dress, slightly burned, just starvin' folks in cars, waiting patiently to exit the island to go get some rockin' seafood platters on the mainland. And lets not forget the sound, that "kachunk-kachunk, kachunk-kachunk" as your car drove over the bumps of the old bridge. During high tide, the middle of the bridge would be elevated. If you were driving too fast? Airborne. 

4. Julie's Sweet Shop and Rentals: When I was a kid, half of this place was an old school arcade. Complete with rockin' tunes, dirty floors and barefoot, unattended kids in bathing suits. In recent years, its just a beach rental place and ice cream shop. This place is a true beach shack, probably held together with particle board and staples. We love it though. Tons of little kids sitting on the outside benches with way too huge servings of melting ice cream falling on the ground to the waiting, swarming ants in the sand. As far as rentals go though, I'd probably recommend someplace else. The bikes are pretty rough, the prices are a bit too high and if you go over to Yelp for a review, its not pretty. Other off-island places will still deliver to Sunset, with better customer service. You're welcome. (Update: This place was just a shell after years of termites. It is now just a little shack where you can rent a bike. The sweets be gone, but not the memories.)

5. Kathy: My mom is the baddest of the beach bitches on the block. Mom's been spear heading trips to the beach for most of my 35 years. Some have been better than others, but that's just part of the adventure. She would have that brochure in hand by January and would spend days scouring the pages for the perfect rental house. She would spend the spring counting the days, watching Summer Rental, getting a box ready with staples for the kitchen, planning the route, etc. It was a hunting and gathering extravaganza.  And somehow, for years and years, we made this trip, 3 then 4 of us, usually in a 4 door sedan. That's right, mom didn't move up to a larger vehicle until I was in high school. We are master packers, apparently. And when it came to loading the car, that's something I can only compare to putting the lights up on the Christmas tree: painful, yet beautiful.

6. Terry: My dad knows how to slow his life down for a week, which is such an important lesson to learn and pass on to my kids. Now that dad has cancer, its a lesson that is coming in very handy.  When we were at the beach, he would sleep in, go for long walks around the island, play in the water with us and go hunt up the best fresh seafood for dinner. In his younger days, back up on the Outer Banks, he'd rent a para-sail or water ski and ride the sound to his hearts content. Once or twice, he went hang gliding in the dunes of Kitty Hawk. He has many more adventures in store.

I realize that you can't have Terry and Kack for your vacation, but they wrote the book and I want to share their secrets. Here are the

• Vacation isn't always perfect, nor should it be.
• Its good to get the hell out of town. Staycations are very popular because travel can be expensive, but its so good for your head to get in a new space. There is a place for you at the right price, just keep looking. You don't have to spend alot of money for it to be meaningful.
• Some people can't sit still on vacation. This isn't a feeling I can relate to, personally. The journey is so long, I just want to sit still when I arrive. But everyone has their own ideas of how vacation should go. Do you. 
• Eat and drink what the hell you want.

Leo

Leo and Marilyn showed up at the hospital just as Mom and I were coming back from the cafeteria with our bland hospital food. We didn't even want to eat but it was a distraction, something to do while Dad was down in a procedural area. They were trying to tap some fluid off of his lungs for comfort.

We were coming off the elevator and there they were. I think we were both a bit crestfallen. We'd had so many visitors and just wanted a few minutes of quiet. But here we were. We went into this little silent meditation room with quilts on the walls and comfortable chairs. Marilyn is an old college friend of my Mom's. They lived together for a while after graduation and stayed close throughout the years. My memories of Marilyn are mostly of her long visits with us in the summer to get away from her husband, Leo. Somehow they prevailed.

We hugged and sat down and mom and I attempted to eat while explaining Dad's condition: cancer was everywhere, moving to comfort care. Mom was so polite, asking about the kids. Leo sat in the back, smug with his arms crossed. Not participating in the conversation but waiting. He was waiting for his moment. When it came, he crossed the room to sit near us and began to witness about how some shoulder injury was healed by the power of prayer. Folks, I don't object to any one's religion, do you. But I'm an oncology nurse and my dad was actively dying and from my experience, the lord can't fix metastatic melanoma just yet. I couldn't believe that I was sitting there listening to this bull shit. This visit by Leo was all about Leo, not about my Dad. I kept looking over at mom to gauge her reaction and she just kept looking at her food and questioning Leo about what exactly his intentions were. From what I could decipher from his ten minutes of bullshit was that he wanted was to attempt a fucking faith healing on my Dad. I was seeing white, hot rage. Mom was highly offended but was so polite. She told Leo that we didn't need a faith healing but instead requested continued prayer for dad's comfort. I was fucking rude and told him we weren't interested.

I saw them roll my dad back to the room so I had an excuse to leave.  I was so upset and crying, I just went to the end of the hallway and waited until they visited with dad a bit. I managed to walk back to give Marilyn a hug when they were leaving, didn't give Leo a glance. She was really apologetic and I told her how I felt. What I told her was that when family is suffering, you show up to be there, not to put on a goddamned show. Marilyn knew that, she's good people. But she's married to Leo and she lets him wear the pants. Her choice.

When they left, Mom and I kind of had a silent moment to catch our breath.  Puffing away on her e-cig, mom watched Marilyn and Leo walk in silence to their car and drive away. I joined her.  We were just like, "what the hell was that?" She said she was proud of me for speaking my mind. I said, "what an asshole." But I wasn't sure if I was talking about Leo or me.

Later that evening mom pulled out an envelope Marilyn handed mom before they left. In it was a really sweet letter and $1,000. Mom didn't need their money. So she handed it to me and my sister. We all had a good chuckle. Anytime we bought something with it we'd say "thanks Leo!"

Go piss up a rope, Leo.

This is me.

This is me. This is me forcing myself to write something. This is me forcing myself to take some time for me. This is me allowing myself to feel ok today.

I've had this blog a long ass time. I haven't written anything down for two years. Its been a long, hard two years. I'm not saying my life has been in shambles, but its been hard.

In the last two years, I've gotten divorced and remarried. My dad, grandfather and grandmother died. Then a shocker last summer when my SIL's husband died. Myself and bebe have moved three times. Some reality TV putz was somehow elected president and is making a mockery of our country, undoing a lot of good things the previous did. There is violent political turmoil. So much so that my wife started having panic attacks. My job is literally killing me, I'm overweight and have hypertension. I've reached a point at work where I never wanted to be: Dead Inside. This is someone who changed her whole life around and took on thousands of dollars in debt to do this job, but its a constant disappointment. Love the work and my patients, but don't love the politics. I don't think I've experienced more disillusionment and depressive episodes in my life than I have this year so far. Fuck!

I feel constant judgement from my former partner and his family. I was never sure if it was real or in my head, but now I know its definitely real. And that all recently came to a head when, granted, I made a really dumb decision. And I made it based on my inability to communicate with him/them or my wife. I won't go into details about that decision but it made for a really terrible week in my family's life that I'd like to forget. But I won't forget it because it kind of brought me back online as a human, wife and mother. All this life trauma has had me in a bit of a fog. I've been unable to be present. I've failed myself, my kid, my wife, my family. I've been unable to create a damn thing; not a pie, granny square or drawing. Including a few simple words on this blog.  I have so many stories to share, but can't get them through the mud for a clear, simple tale. All this has left me as a person with no outlet. All humans need some way to get it all out and I felt like I'd lost it.

I'm digging myself out. Day by day. Up and out of the damn hole. Life is hard sometimes, then it gets better. Then it gets hard again, then better again.  That's just how life is, right? That's what I tell my kid.

I need to tell myself too.